This article was published on February 26, 2011

Google makes subtle changes to Picasa, activates “unlimited storage” option


Google makes subtle changes to Picasa, activates “unlimited storage” option

Users of Google’s popular Picasa photo storage platform will now notice that the amount of free space on their account has suddenly increased, with some storage indicators falling drastically overnight.

InstantFundas indicates this is because Google implemented an update to its Picasa service, adapting the way it handles photo uploads, potentially unlocking an option that could see many Picasa users take advantage of unlimited photo and video uploads.

The changes were detailed by a Google employee who was responding to queries regarding the drop in total storage space used on Picasa accounts, noting:

We recently made a change whereby any pictures 800 pixels and under don’t count towards used PWA storage. The new GB numbers you’re seeing are the result of quota recalculations that were made.

The employee then posted a follow-up message about an hour later, highlighting the changes to video uploads:

Thanks for your reply. My apologies…I forgot to mention that all videos under 15 minutes also don’t count towards used PWA storage. This does not affect total GB usage for Gmail.

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This now means that any photo upload under 800 pixels and video upload under 15 minutes will now no longer count towards your Picasa Web Storage.

I pay around £3 a year for an extra 20GB of storage and my Picasa dropped a considerable amount overnight. It also means that users who take advantage of the free 1GB Picasa storage could resize their photos to 800 pixels and enjoy completely unlimited upload space.

Whether you would want to is another question.

The new changes could be perfect for small website owners who want to store small images for use on their websites. Keeping them below a set limit, they could hotlink back to an unlimited number of uploads.

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